cat party

Finnegan is the athletic fellow perched up in the sunlight and Larry is the huskier guy on the ground. If you think, "Oh man, that doesn't look like a cat at all, that looks like a WALRUS," I can assure you that that is indeed how he really looks. To prove it:

And here he is, trying to get in on the action:

Stuff

So, I ransacked the house.
Ten years, two dorm rooms, five apartments, one townhouse, four states, one District, eleven roommates, one domestic partner (now fiance). These are the things that made the journey, were packed and unpacked each time, hauled in boxes, shipped, opened, set up, put away, everytime, all the way to here:

20 things:
- a necklace made of Czech glass
- a picture of my dad and me at the Denver City Open
- four VHS tapes: (The Princess Bride, Dazed and Confused, White Christmas, Mixed Nuts)
- a picture of my mom and Hobie at the Clam Lake Lodge
- my heart-shaped locket of my friend Erik who passed away at the end of our freshman year of high school
- blue glass bulb earrings I wore for my high school graduation and engagement photos
- a terrible blue tank top
- a tea cup with my name on it, made by Mary Sharpe Davis in Albuquerque
- my senior yearbook
- a photo of my high school friends, taken the night we took over Butterfield's cabin
- my senior prom dress (which I wore around the house this morning)
- an inappropriately short dress I wore one time in high school
- my mom's old white satin pyjamas
- hemp adidas I ordered out of the back of Rolling Stone when I was 16
- my old passport (amazing bangs)
- my bear
- a nice hairbrush
- my softball mit, used regularly now for the first time in ten years (four nights a week!)
- the quilt my grandma made for my high school graduation
- Grunt, our underground newspaper from middle school, which got me in soooooo much trouble

28 Compact discs:
I won't name them all, mostly out of embarrassment, but highlights include:
- Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes, the first cd I ever purchased
- Arrested Development, one of my all time favorites to this day
- Garth Brooks Live, which I listened to today while painting and found surprisingly AWESOME
- Weezer, the blue album, probably the most listened to of that era
- like, four Aerosmith cds
- a complimentary cd called Zima Cuts from a case of Zima procured for a party
- Mazzy Star, So Tonight that We Might See, which I used to fall asleep to, and while awake I would light candles and feel deep

What have you carried along the way?

This one goes out to my more transient friends, those in their late twenties, currently finding themselves in their tenth apartment in ten years...
What objects have come along on your entire journey? I'm not talking the usual emotional baggage, but the physical kind. Since the day you left home for college or other adventures, what things have you carried along the way? What items have made it this far, carried in boxes from state to state and town to town and dorm to house, since 1998?
I'm looking - I'll be back later.

limited palette

One of Sara's suggestions:
"Limited palette - use only alizarine crimson, cadmium yellow, viridian green and white. Make a "full" spectrum painting using only these colors."

Then it seemed like it needed more weight...
and I'm sort of liking it, but hoping it doesn't remind everyone else of enchiladas - or a wookie village.
Thoughts?

argh.

So far, this has been my hardest day. Can't figure out what to paint. Everything seems so cliche. Aren't you grateful you've taken the time to read this post?

white on white is alright

I went wedding dress shopping in New York City, Denver, and Sacramento a few months ago, and with my army of consultants tried on at least fifty dresses. Today I drew every single one I could remember trying on and made this little painting using almost only Titanium White. My Dress, as well as the two runners up (those most inciting buyer's remorse) all make appearances.

Taking photos of this painting is difficult! My kindly neighbor Mike offered up his digital camera after I was struggling on the ground with my stupid cell phone, defending the painting from cats and bunnies. Thanks, Mike! Here are two other photos:

white, ivory, champagne

Sara suggested I work on a piece using mostly white paint, and different tints of white. Well, when I think white right now, I can't help but focus on the one million wedding dresses I tried on about two months ago. So I'm painting these one million wedding dresses, in every shape (mostly gawdawful, by the way) and every hue of white.

(Wow, this is a horrible photo! Will try for a better one later....)

Inspiration in the produce department.

Monday, June 23.
Sara often finds inspiration in the produce department, so I begin my search there. I go to Wegmans. It is glorious. I am hungry. I am hungry for mangoes, cantaloupe, plums, and avacadoes. I never eat properly when not at work, need to work on this.

Head home, totally take over the living room, scare the cats, and start eating then painting the cantaloupe.



I keep working on the cantaloupe and try to just turn my brain off. Let my brush be an extension of my eyes. Eat some spaghetti o's. Try to get a little Diego Rivera thing going on with this fruit.



Huh. Not sure about this one. Need to add highlights and more shadows but it's too wet - I guess that's the problem with one oil painting per day, didn't think about that. So I'll post again once it's a little more finished.

My first reflection of this project is: I'm painting like I never really knew how to paint before. Yuck.

6 years later....

This week, June 23 - 27, I have an entire week to paint. Fabulous artist Sara Qualey (www.saraqualey.com) has provided some guidelines for my work this week, and I'll post my progress here each day. I have to say, I am nervous that I've forgotten how to do it, and I'm not thrilled to show off this first foray back into painting The last time I had this kind of time to paint was December 2002. Here are some paintings from that last week:





So I used to paint all the time, basically living in my studio in the now demolished Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building at CU-Boulder. About halfway through my time there, we learned that the building had been condemmed, our poor old glorious studio space, previously the campus stables, was headed toward destruction. Students keeled over left and right from the fumes everyday. At some point, one of the graduate student's studios went up in flames, as his oily rags spontaneously combusted. But I staked out my spot early on, maybe sophomore year, the prime spot near the one working window. I camped out there for the next several years and loved every minute in that studio - and while my fellow students lamented the poor working conditions, their declining health, the newly furbished engineering buildings - I think I always felt lucky to have that space and the time to paint.



I left the "doing" to do the "looking" - moving into art history for grad school, and now have a career in museum education. Come to think of it, if the rumors are true, only one of the painting majors has "made it" as a working artist, and he's the one that turned in a taxidermied deer with plastic forks sticking out of its sides - as his final project in our advanced painting class. Huh.